Taking the Guessing out of Etiquette

Aside from the good advice, one of the things I like best about Miss Manners is how well she cuts through the fog to identify an issue, and then communicates that issue and the attendant etiquette effectively.

A good example of this is her reply to a self-proclaimed "accent nerd" who wonders if there is a polite way to ask someone Where are you from?

(I can both cringe and imagine a younger version of myself doing something like this.)

There are, of course, numerous contexts within an existing conversation in which that sort of question is a natural and good part of the flow. But also, in today's ridiculous, politics-saturated culture, it could be easy to get sidetracked. Both facts make this a tricky question, but Miss Manners explains quite well why it's a bad lead for the questioner, concluding as follows:

There are less intrusive ways to get to know people, but you have led Miss Manners to believe that friendship, or even acquaintanceship, is not your objective; rather, it is playing your little guessing game. Please stop.

Ouch!

She builds up to this well, but the sting will serve the good purpose here of advising how best to treat other people like human beings, and alerting the innocent of how easy it can be to send the wrong message about themselves.

-- CAV

GOP Stands by While Trump Sabotages Them

At The Hill, an alarmed Republican bemoans Trump's latest unforced error: His ridiculous trade war with Canada.

Surprisingly enough (for Trump, at least), slapping huge import taxes on the biggest international trading partner of many "red" states is harming their economies in ways voters will probably notice, and correctly blame on Trump and his party:

A recent assessment by the Visual Capitalist highlights 23 states that get most of their imports from Canada. Among the states with closely watched elections are Maine, which gets 68.7 percent of it imports from Canada, Alaska (40.7 percent), Minnesota (33.5 percent), Iowa (26.6 percent), and Ohio (18.7 percent).

But trade is a two-way street. It's not just the increased costs -- up to 50 percent more -- U.S. companies, small businesses (like farms) and consumers must pay for Canadian imports. There are also U.S.-made products and services that Canadians may decide not to buy from the United States because the of the tariffs Canada, in response, imposed on imports from the United States. The Visual Capitalist's newly released map outlines the states hardest hit.

The biggest state exporters to Canada are Ohio (exporting $2.3 billion a year) and Pennsylvania ($1.8 billion). Are there important elections in those states that could make the difference in whether Republicans retain the House of Representatives and the Senate? [bold added]

The piece will make gory reading for those of Trump's partisans who don't just assume Trump is playing 4-D chess, and understand why tariffs are a Bad Idea and why swing voters whose livelihoods are affected are going to live up to their name and swing away from their party.

But what the author takes to be the icing on the cake is the following paragraph:

The most puzzling part is that if Trump were determined to pick a trade fight with Canada, he could have easily waited until after November. He chose to do it weeks away from a critical election, which makes you wonder if the conspiracy theorists are right. [bold added]

Yes, the President who still, somehow, commands so much loyalty is a real idiot: Wouldn't it be nice if someone did something about it before the voters do?

And that question -- my question -- as an independent voter fuming about the Trump Party -- is the real icing on the cake.

I seem to recall that Congress could reassert its own constitutional authority over tariffs. Why hasn't it? And if I'm wrong, or there isn't time to do this ahead of the midterms, why not run an the premise of ending this mad effing around with everyone's costs, while insulting their intelligence?

I don't have an answer, but while this column doesn't fall into the disgusting line of sycophantic puff pieces so many conservatives are guilty of these days, it still fails to hold Trump's enablers in the party accountable.

Trump is: obsessed with tariffs, old and set in his ways, insane for all practical purposes, and floating about in an amniotic sac of constant praise and insulation from things he really needs to know.

The people who built that little bubble -- by letting him have his way all the time, and appointing crackpot "advisors" instead of rational adults to his cabinet -- will have reaped what they sowed if the scenario outlined by Merrill Matthews pans out.

And, unless they change course, by starting to restrain this lunatic, they will have deserved an electoral bloodbath and helped the Democrats win Congress.

-- CAV

The American Spectator: High on Its Own Supply?

One of the most eye-opening and disappointing aspects of the rise of Donald Trump has been the apparent decline of conservative journalism.

I say apparent because I have to allow for the possibility that, until that john came along, I just wasn't good at recognizing prostitutes when I saw them. That could, in a way, speak well of me, but all blindness has a price.

Case in point: A recent puff piece in The American Spectator, a publication that a quick search of my archives shows I have referenced at least 16 times over the years.

Its title? "RFK Jr. Wows the GOP Like Jeane Kirkpatrick Did in 1984" (The equally embarrassing subtitle doubles down: "In Dallas, Kennedy reprises a 1984 convention theme: a lifelong Democrat explaining why he crossed the aisle.")

I understand that the founder of this conservative organ is Catholic, and that, accordingly, it espouses social conservative positions I don't agree with, such as opposition to abortion.

I can respect such a stand in the sense that, if an unborn fetus really is human, then abortion should be outlawed as murder.

This post isn't about abortion, but the fact that they hold such a position is important.

Back to the piece...

I was young, and not that engaged in politics during the Reagan Administration. Beyond anti-communist, I don't have a solid grasp of Jeane Kirkpatrick's foreign policy positions, but I suspect they were at least okay for the time, and that her heart was in the right place.

I estimate that she left her party for basically the right reason and did what the Overton Window at the time -- nudged by Reagan -- allowed her to do to stand up to the Soviet Union.

However fair my estimate, she was no turncoat, and her adopted party didn't whitewash anything from her past.

How times have changed!

Get a load of this opening:

Thursday evening at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly brought the GOP midterm convention audience to their feet with a speech reminiscent of Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention. Like Kirkpatrick, RFK Jr. noted his Democratic Party roots. Like Kirkpatrick, RFK Jr. emphasized the differences between the modern Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of a bygone era. RFK Jr. was a Democrat chosen by Republican President Donald Trump to "make America healthy again," while in 1981, Kirkpatrick was a Democrat chosen by Republican President Ronald Reagan to help him win the Cold War.

RFK Jr. stated that neither his father (Robert F. Kennedy) nor his uncle (John F. Kennedy) would recognize today's Democrats. Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1984 noted that neither Harry Truman, JFK, nor Lyndon Johnson would recognize the Democrats who gathered that year in San Francisco, whom she labeled the "blame America first crowd." [bold added]

I'll skip the gooey, pus-like filler of this disgusting piece of sycophancy, but go for it if you're into spiritual masochism...

The conclusion is rich:

Just as Ronald Reagan was in 1984, according to Kirkpatrick, making America safer and more secure, so Donald Trump today is, according to RFK Jr., making America healthy again and needs a Republican-controlled Congress to complete this important work. [bold added]

This is all being said about a person well-known as an anti-vaccine crank, among a group of people who -- until five minutes ago -- saw vaccination as common sense, and regarded anti-vaxxers as dumb hippies who belonged in California.

Kennedy must have enjoyed speaking of people not recognizing their own parties, because I am sure Reagan wouldn't have recognized the one he was speaking to.

Bobby Kennedy is an anti-vaccine crank who deserves to be known as a baby killer, especially after his 2019 exploits in Samoa, which led to a measles outbreak that killed 85, most of whom were children under five.

This piece of refuse is whom Republicans and The Spectator lionize? That rag has an entire section of supposedly "pro-life" writing. Have they changed their minds about the value of human life, however they define it? Or is that profession of concern about human life as hollow a show of "virtue-signalling" as Kennedy's professed concern for our health?

-- CAV

The Cost of Turning Away Talent

Back in July, Veronique de Rugy of the Cato Institute considered the costs of Trump's anti-immigration agenda, and finds them exorbitant.

The gist of this well-argued and alarming piece:

...STEM students who stay in the U.S. after graduation "patent new inventions at four times the rate of typical college graduates and are responsible for around 10 percent of all new inventions patented in the United States. They found high-growth startup companies at six times the rate of US-born graduates."

That means we can dispense with the idea that if a foreign engineer gets a job, an American engineer must have lost one. Protectionism applied to human capital relies on the same economic fallacy that underlies other forms of protectionism: the belief that the economy is like one pie, and hence, allowing foreign interests to take a seat hurts those already at the table.

Economies don't work that way. Talented people don't merely fill existing jobs. They create them by inventing products, starting companies, conducting research, and making the people around them more productive. In the process, they create opportunities for other people that otherwise wouldn't exist.

Giving a cold shoulder to foreign students is particularly absurd when you consider Washington's obsession with competing against China. Politicians insist that America is engaged in an existential technological race. They spend billions of dollars subsidizing semiconductors and other favored industries. They develop elaborate industrial policies intended to make America dominant in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing.

Then, when a potentially brilliant young scientist from India, China, or anywhere else earns an advanced degree at an American university and wants to stay and contribute to the American economy, our government says perhaps they should leave.

You can throw billions of taxpayer dollars at a semiconductor factory in Arizona. You cannot manufacture genius through an appropriations bill. [bold added]

Economists have managed to put the cost in dollar terms:

[D]iscouraging just one-third of international STEM graduates could leave the American economy 0.7 percent to 1.3 percent smaller, or roughly $200 billion to $400 billion in GDP over a decade -- equivalent to losing the entire economy of Utah or South Carolina.

This is bad enough, but de Rugy correctly warns of higher, intangible costs that American patriots should appreciate.

I think the piece does a good job of both demolishing the ludicrous "fixed pie" view of the economy protectionism is based on and offering positive arguments in favor of making immigration safer, legal, and more common.

I would recommend it to anyone genuinely curious about whether immigration is a good thing -- a question many people can be forgiven for asking these days, thanks to the full-court press of nativists of late.

-- CAV

Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "9/11 -- 25 Years Later: Objectivism, Islamic Totalitarianism, and America's Crisis of Ideas," by Elan Journo, Onkar Ghate, and Yaron Brook (New Ideal):

September 11, 2001 -- and America's response to it -- shaped the 21st century. Confidence in America's ability to win wars cracked, trust in leadership and experts went down, and, in response, populism, nihilism, and conspiracism raised their ugly heads. From day one, the Ayn Rand Institute's experts grasped the meaning of the attacks and the significance of a proper response. They called for war with Iran and opposed Bush's altruistic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their advice was not followed, but their predictions held.

In this special livestream marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Yaron Brook, Elan Journo, and Onkar Ghate -- the Institute's three leading experts on the attacks -- trace what went wrong in its lead-up and aftermath, and how Ayn Rand's philosophy let them foresee what most people still struggle to understand.

2.25 hour podcast

2. "After 9/11, What Went Wrong? ," by Elan Journo (New Ideal):

Since September 11, 2001, the Ayn Rand Institute has commented extensively (via articles, books, interviews, lectures, and podcasts) on why the 9/11 attacks happened, how America should have responded, and why -- 25 years and three wars later -- the United States still fails to confront Islamic totalitarianism.

ARI's analysis of 9/11 and its aftermath has proven tragically accurate. To mark 25 years since the attacks, we are pleased to announce the publication of the third, expanded edition of Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism, which includes short essays on October 7 and the war in Iran, and we invite you to join us for two special events.

1820 words/6 minutes

3. "Election Fraud: Information vs. Propaganda," by Peter Schwartz (Peter Schwartz):

If someone says to you "7 times 3 equals 21," you can judge that statement as true. Which means that it is a successful effort at cognition, a successful attempt to grasp reality. But if you hear those same words being uttered by a parrot, you cannot judge them as either true or false. The squawking of a parrot is outside the realm of cognition. The parrot is not trying to name a truth. It is just emitting sounds.

The same applies to Trump's statements about election fraud. He does not care whether his assertions are actually true. So one's initial response should not be to grant his arbitrary claims a cognitive status, any more than one would to the parrot's squawkings. Rather, one should ask: What is Trump's purpose?

600 words/2 minutes

4. "Died Of, Died With, Died in a Vacuum," by Amesh Adalja (Tracking Zebra):

If I were teaching public health communication, I would use this week as the case study in how not to do it. It is an unforced error, and it is much better to be transparent than to spend the week trying to score points against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

My stake in this is not abstract. I am an infectious disease, emergency medicine, and critical care physician who takes care of patients in Pittsburgh and Butler County hospitals, and I spend a large part of every week explaining this virus -- to reporters, to audiences, and to people who are not ideologues but are genuinely unsure what to believe. This week made every part of that job harder. The anti-vaccine movement is emboldened, and it did not have to earn it. Pennsylvania's health officials now look to a substantial portion of the public like people who were being either dishonest or manipulative, which is corrosive in a way that outlasts this outbreak by years. And the person who was merely hesitant last month has now watched a governor, a coroner, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services contradict each other about whether two people died, which is precisely the kind of spectacle that converts hesitancy into conviction. That conviction does not stay in the exam room. It becomes unvaccinated kindergarteners, and unvaccinated kindergarteners become measles cases, and measles cases eventually become the thing everyone this week has been arguing about whether we actually had.

1950 words/6 minutes

-- CAV

'Asses in (Car) Seats' vs. Management

Consultant Gleb Tsipursky recently examined the latest iteration of what I like to call the "Asses in Seats" method of management: Using the commutes of the people one should be managing as proof-of-work.

Tipursky's analysis is quite thoughtful. For example, he considers gains in productivity seen with working from home during the pandemic and the more recent use of artificial intelligence, and offers, for example, that good use of AI requires focus -- which is often superior at home and away from the distractions of an office.

At the same time, Tipursky recommends judicious use of in-office "anchor days" for those things, like mentoring or collaboration, that work better in person.

Overall, he makes a good case for a more active evaluation of output and how different environments affect different kinds of work.

As if the positive motivation of having a choice of work environments at one's disposal weren't enough, Tipursky cautions against the movement towards full-time office work because subordiantes are hardly powerless:

[Fully onsite] policies may fit some cultures and business constraints. But executives should admit they are making a bet, not simply following settled science.

The labor-market effects make the bet riskier. Employees often value flexible work because it returns time, reduces commute friction, and lets people handle life logistics with less daily stress. In Bloom's Trip.com trial, the reduction in quits was especially visible among women, non-managers and long commuters. That should get the attention of every leader facing skill shortages, retention problems or rising compensation demands. A hard office mandate can quietly convert a productivity question into a talent leakage problem. [bold added]

I found his arguments compelling and hope the "hybrid model built around results instead of rituals" he advocates catches on.

-- CAV

A Rogues' Gallery of 'Net Zero' Apostates

"This is just the pure religious nature of the climate catastrophist movement. It has one commandment: 'thou shalt not impact nature.' They just think that everything good is a happy climate god and everything bad is a vengeful climate god." -- Alex Epstein

***

According to John Stossel, world leaders and corporations who once backed Net Zero are "ditching" that foolhardy and dangerous policy, some more quietly than others:

Now, countries like Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom are walking back their net-zero push.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz now says rules must "better align climate targets, market realities, companies and jobs."

He also said, "It was quite simply a strategic mistake to phase out nuclear energy."

No kidding.

And here in America, I hear less climate fearmongering.

The Washington Post reports, "analysis of lawmakers' appearances and posts on social media show they are going quiet on climate."

"It's very surprising to many people," says [author Alex] Epstein, "how unserious the climate catastrophists were about net zero, and the way you can see this is what's happened with the rise of AI."

Tech companies now report increases in emissions, even though "five years ago, they were all telling us: 'climate change, existential crisis, got to go net zero!'" Epstein laughs. [bold added]

I was glad Stossel interviewed Alex Epstein for this piece, since the good news he delivers deserves good analysis. Epstein holds that we're in a better intellectual environment, but is quick to point out the fact that so many people who once pushed Net Zero seem to have memory-holed their past actions.

I wouldn't say climate catastrophism is dead, but it is in a real retreat worldwide, rather than just superficially looking that way in the United States because the current President has slightly hindered it, and tends to suck all of the oxygen away from other news.

-- CAV